Path: utzoo!utstat!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!math.lsa.umich.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!samsung!munnari.oz.au!csc2!mbl900
From: mbl900@csc2.anu.edu.au (Mathew BM LIM)
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
Subject: Problem with remotely mounted spooling area
Message-ID: <5059@csc2>
Date: 7 Nov 90 17:43:41 GMT
Organization: Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
Lines: 68
Nntp-Posting-Host: csc2.anu.oz.au


We have a "cluster" of 4 Sun servers, a 4/280 and 3 4/65's. All running
SunOS4.1.

I would like to remotely mount /var/spool/news from the 4/280
on one of the 4/65's and run nntpd and C news on this.

At first I thought that this was mearly a matter of using NFS to 
remotely mount /var/spool/news on the 4/65, however it turns
out to be not a easy as all that (isnt it always?)

The nntpd makes a call to statfs(2) to find out the number of inodes
free on the spooling area (or so I gather). If that number is less
than MINFILES, it will not allow a transfer. The problem is (quote from
the SunOS manual for statfs(2) ) :

"BUGS
     The NFS revision 2 protocol does not permit  the  number  of
     free files to be provided to the client; thus, when statfs()
     or fstatfs() are done on a  file  on  an  NFS  file  system,
     f_files and f_ffree are always -1."

This causes nntpd to never allow transfers, hence I never get any news
fed to me.

Has anyone got a workaround for this (I have nntp V 1.5.10 by the way)?
I don't mind if nntp never checks for MINFREE as I have about 300MBytes
of spooling space to play with so am not worried about running out
of space. I could hack out the code myself but would rather not.

I have tried using RFS instead of NFS to do the remote mount but (SunOS) RFS has
a strange "Feature" in that it only allows 36000 inodes on a RFS
file system (or so our Sun support person tells me), when that number 
is exceeded you start getting strange errors like this :

 manuel 12:57pm -> ls /var/spool/news
ls: /var/spool/news/misc: Too many open files
ls: /var/spool/news/psu: Too many open files
ls: /var/spool/news/pubnet: Too many open files
ls: /var/spool/news/talk: Too many open files
./              bionet/         general/        mail/           soc/
../             biz/            gnu/            news@           software/
admin/          canb/           groups/         newsites/       test/
alt/            comp/           in.coming/      newusers/       to/
announce/       config/         junk/           out.going/      trial/
anu/            control/        lists/          rec/            unix-pc/
aus/            ddn/            lost+found/     sci/            vmsnet/
 manuel 12:59pm ->

So at most I can only have 36000 articles ??

Why not run nntp on the 4/280 you say? Well I would rather not as the 4/280 
is quite heavily loaded and I thought I might offload some of
that onto the other servers. True the network traffic still
ultimately goes to the 4/280 but at least the CPU does not
get flogged to death.


Thanks in advance 
---
Mathew Lim, Unix Systems Programmer, Computer Services Centre, ANU, Australia.
Telephone : +61 6 249 2750	| ACSnet   : Mathew.BM.Lim@anu.oz
Fax       : +61 6 247 3425	| Internet : Mathew.BM.Lim@anu.edu.au
--
---
Mathew Lim, Unix Systems Programmer, Computer Services Centre, ANU, Australia.
Telephone : +61 6 249 2750	| ACSnet   : Mathew.BM.Lim@anu.oz
Fax       : +61 6 247 3425	| Internet : Mathew.BM.Lim@anu.edu.au


Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com